JOURNAL OF TRAVEL 



AND 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



THE GEOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF THE PRESENT 

 SCENERY OF SCOTLAND. 



By Archibald Geikie, F.R.S. 



T is a common belief that geology as a science deals wholly, 

 or almost wholly, with a time earher than the advent of 

 man upon the earth, and that its proper subject of research 



ends where human history begins. As Sanscrit, though indis- 

 pensable in the philosophical study of living tongues, is itself 

 a dead language, so geology, though it may be admitted to 

 give the key to much that would otherwise be hard to understand 

 in the present economy of things, is, nevertheless, frequently looked 

 upon as essentially the investigation of an extinct past. But this 

 estimate, true so far as it goes, is a signally defective one. Its 

 prevalence, by fostering the love of the marvellous, has probably 

 increased the general interest in geological questions ; yet there 

 can be Httle doubt that, at the same time, it has tended to hinder 

 the progress of sound geology. The great truth cannot be too 

 often or too strongly reiterated, that geology is still, to continue 

 the figure, a living language. Not only does it record the history 

 of the earth and its inhabitants during bygone periods, but it 

 chronicles the life and motions of the world around us now. 

 It is, if one may so speak, the physiology of the earth. The 

 physiologist inquires into the structure and functions of the body : 

 the geologist, in like manner, studies the nature and functions of 

 the different forces that affect the surface or the interior of the 

 crust of the earth. He watches their modes of working, and notes 

 especially the results which they achieve. Winds, rains, rivers, 

 Travel. a 



